Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Twas The Fourth of July

Hope everyone had a great Fourth of July! Mine was interesting, a little different than normal, but still a lot of fun. I, along with most every other American, was thrilled to have Friday off from work; although, admittedly, it was confusing at times because Friday night I kept thinking that church was the next day. Friday morning I had an appointment to get the oil changed in the car and the tires rotated and just about the time I got ready to leave, the bottom fell out of the sky. I had planned on walking to the YMCA to get a workout in while my car was being worked on, but the buckets of rain kept me tucked safely and dryly inside the Goodyear.

When the car was finished, I drove over to my parents' house and made a quick trip to Wal-Mart with my dad and then he cooked pancakes and then we began the arduous task of cleaning out the attic. We decided it would be best if we went to Lowe's to buy plywood to nail down to give the attic more room and so we could maybe move a few things around and actually get some work done. We got two strips of plywood down and moved some of Justin's things to that corner, threw some things away and set some things aside for the yard sale this fall and then my dad said we were done for the day. He said we got a lot more accomplished than he thought we would, whereas I was disappointed in how little we accomplished. The telling of two minds I suppose. The rest of Friday was spent being lazy and doing not much other than a few loads of laundry.

Saturday morning I was up bright and early as the Tour de France got underway. I made my traditional French toast and enjoyed watching the time trial and just generally speaking enjoyed a relaxed morning. I made a cake and coleslaw for the cookout later that day and cooked some meat for my dad who was having a cookout as well. Justin stopped by that afternoon to pick up the meat that I had cooked and in the process dropped almost the whole pan of meat drippings all over my front porch. So, it probably goes without saying that I spent the next 30 minutes or so cleaning up greasy meat juice off my front porch. It wasn't exactly how I planned on spending some of the holiday, but those are the breaks.

Once the meat juice was all cleaned up, I showered and headed over to the cookout which was being held at the brother of my cousin Jan's. Jan and I are cousins by marriage so her brother is not my cousin if that makes sense. All of the cousins that are my age were there and had set up games of slip and slide, volleyball, wiffle ball, corn hole, etc. I, however, was not provided the memo that there would be intense physical activity and didn't really come prepared to play. rest assured, I will be prepared for next year as I've already ordered a t-shirt for the occasion and will come ready to play.

We had lots of food and there were lots of people there, most of whom we didn't even know. We all laughed because there was a "Family" side and a "We Don't Know Those People" side. As luck would have it, the skies opened up once again about the time it got dark and so the fireworks show was put into a predicament of sorts. We waited for the rain to pass, but it wouldn't let up and so the guys went out in the rain to shoot the fireworks. The problem was that the trees were clocking the view. Had it not been rained, we would have been able to stand where we could see, but as we were all crammed under the carport, we had to look at the fireworks between tree branches. There were also long breaks between each shot and I eventually got tired of sitting around waiting for the next one and decided to pack things up and head on home.

Overall, it was a fun afternoon and evening and I look forward to next year's festivities where I will come prepared to play!